Charlotte Church - Let's Be Alone

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

MP3 here.

I put up my hand to review the CC album for Stylus (it'll be up next week, I imagine it will end up getting a D), and for some reason, even though "Crazy Chick" is good but not as GREAT GREAT GREAT as it should be, listening to the whole album really annoyed me.

Did anyone read last week's UK Launch chart commentary? James Masteron = pillock, because he reckons Joss Stone would have done a better job than Charlotte on "Crazy Chick", which is possibly one of the stupidest things I've ever read in my life as in fact, Joss Stone and Charlotte Church have the exact same problem - good voices (one "soulful", apparently, as amorphous a concept as that is, and the other of a technicality far and above pop music), rubbish material that doesn't work as pop generally, so the artists try to put their personality over it, find it doesn't fit and the song goes all arse over tit. Joss Stone would have tried to soul it up, I can't imagine anything worse than Joss doing a song whose tempo is faster than "dirge".

Nonetheless, the underlying point - unusually for Masterton - is sound. Ill-fitting material is frustrating.

Anyway, I think this song annoys me most of all, even though it is the second best song on the album (there are only three - the other good one is "Moodswings"), because really, apart from her Voice-of-an-Angel wailings at the start, it would have been so much better sung by.... which other pop star of magnificent range and immense musical talent?

Why, poplings, Kelly Osbourne. This is a fantastic Kelly Osbourne single which has mistakenly been given to Charlotte Church - it would have required almost no real range and who cares if it would have needed to be autotuned to death - and her producers and her have decided to ponce it up with quasi-operatic bintish wailings just to show that yes, she's doing a pop album, but she can really sing - voice of an angel. I mean, what's the bloody point? It's a fun, darkish electro romp, adding artifice to it just because it's Charlotte Church and she can sing "Ave Maria' and make old ladies weep, doesn't it completely miss the point of her wanting to be like, a proper pop star/tabloid goddess?

Great pop doesn't necessarily stretch octaves (Mariah Carey spent the first few years of her career trying to disprove this and failed), and wanting to dabble in it sometimes means that you'll have to go WELL inside your own capabilities and not really challenge yourself technically, instead using other techniques to impress. And she does on this song. Her delivery of the melody is fine, she rides the synths without overpowering them and her emphases and vocal nuances are quite different to even those on "Crazy Chick". So she's capable of playing the pop game, but stifled and stymied by who she is.

Where's this grand transformation amidst limp ballads and almost-ruined slapdash electro-pop stompers? Is it any bloody wonder pop's not charting when it keeps misfiring and being demeaned by the people inside the tent?

Comments

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Oh blimey, just downloaded it and I totally agree wrt the 'proper singing' bits. They so sound grafted on from another track. And yeah, it doesn't help that she doesn't seem entirely comfortable singing the rest of it either; it would definitely work better with a rougher voice. Perhaps she should smoke more fags.

Having said all that, I can sort of see her proper voice being useful in a pop context. Wuthering Heights cover, anyone?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

She should cover all of The Dreaming. That would sort things out.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I think I actually enjoy the Proper Singing bits best on this song! Especially towards the end when the juxtaposition with the zinging electro noises is quite effective. It's the rest of it which is disappointing, like 'Crazy Chick' a great idea in theory but in practice the tune's just too weak.

Such a shame, C-Lo was perfectly placed to fill the pop vacuum in the charts right now.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Joss Stone is a menace. I think that you got me, you got me, ugh ugh messin with MAH MAHHND thing she did was her stab at 'uptempo', put her on a handbag house track, then we'll see how far soulful gets you. I'm not sure I've ever heard anything expressive by her.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Bbbbut Tom, she's sooooo soulful, it's like she's actually black!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

STRAIGHT OUTA CULLUMPTON!

(no, i will not stop doing this joke)

[zenith.livejournal.com]

How much does Jools Holland like Joss Stone?



This much!

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

Joss Stone is expressive in the sense that she doesn't ever sound like she's enjoying herself, see "Super Duper Love" for best example of her non-fun.

Charlotte Church is supposed to be a fun, boozy bint! Where the fuck is that girl on this record?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is a good point. She should be covering "Rabbit" by Chas and Dave.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

BRING BACK PROG!!

i don't think it's impossible that technique can be used in/as pop - cf hocus pocus! :o - but i think you have to use it in a disrespectful, tohrowaway circus-skill way

haha crøcüs frøcüs a bing-a-bing bing-a-bing eh-eh-EH

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't think technique CAN'T be used in pop, I just think that using it because it's available is a bad move - best example is, as I said, Mariah Carey, who's just had her first massive hit in ages off her own back with a really good, restrained performance that runs rings around her early caterwauling.

If Charlotte wants to do mega power-ballads that show off her voice, that's good, and such. But she shouldn't spoil otherwise perfectly good songs with needless displays of technique. There's a time and a place, etc.

I say that as someone with vague, dirty prog sympathies.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Great pop doesn't necessarily stretch octaves (Mariah Carey spent the first few years of her career trying to disprove this and failed)

(Logic-bearing side of brain explodes)